Complete virtual unwrapping and reading of a rolled Herculaneum papyrus
This work provides a scalable framework for non-invasively reading the unopened Herculaneum library, solving a long-standing bottleneck in classical scholarship.
The authors achieved the first complete virtual unwrapping and reading of a Herculaneum papyrus (PHerc. 1667) using high-resolution phase-contrast microtomography and machine learning, enabling full scholarly study without physical opening. They also recovered the title and author of PHerc. 139, identifying it as Philodemus' On Gods, Book 8.
The carbonized papyri from Herculaneum preserve the only large-scale library to survive from classical antiquity, but many unopened rolls remain unread because physical opening risks irreversible damage. X-ray computed microtomography ($μ$CT) and virtual unwrapping offer a non-invasive route to their texts, yet previous work on sealed Herculaneum scrolls has recovered only localized readings or limited surface regions. Here, using high-resolution phase-contrast $μ$CT acquired on the BM18 beamline at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), together with improved computational unrolling and machine learning, we achieve the complete virtual unwrapping and reading of PHerc. 1667 under explicit coverage and papyrological-review criteria. This makes PHerc. 1667 the first Herculaneum papyrus to be fully digitally unrolled and read for extended scholarly study without physical opening. In PHerc. Paris 4, the optimized scan protocol makes ink directly visible in the tomographic volume, allowing three-dimensional ink segmentation and independent validation of surface-conditioned ink recovery. In PHerc. 139, we recover title and author-attribution evidence identifying the scroll as Philodemus, On Gods, Book 8. These results move virtual unwrapping of the Herculaneum scrolls beyond isolated demonstrations towards a scalable framework for systematic recovery of the still-unopened library.